Wednesday, 15 February, 2006

This post contains mainly what I wrote in Teluguwiki in Google groups over a couple of days. I feel it is a fruitful discussion we, a group of Telugu people have had there. In my next post I will try to present others' views as well.If you find it interesting and want to raise a topic or participate in this kind of discussions, join as a member.Now read on:

"Hundreds of words from English have already made their inroads into Telugu and successfully "masked" their equivalent Telugu words.So what? - some may ask. A language reflects the culture, and the ethos of the people who speak that language. For example, consider this: Respecting elders is an integral part of our culture. But in English language, there are no words to distinguish between elder and younger siblings! In South India, parallel cousins are as good as our own siblings but "jocular" as well as marital relations do exist between cross cousins. But in English there is no such distinction! (Parallel cousins are children of our father's brothers or our mother's sisters and cross cousins are children of our father's sisters or our mother's brothers)Still worse is the case when we can not distinguish between a man's elder sister-in-law and younger sister-in-law and between a woman's younger brother-in-law and elder brother-in-law.I can't count how many times I was confused when I hear someone talking about "rice" wondering whether it was 'biyyam' or 'annam'. It happens only with Telugus. Tamilians' and Bengalis'love for their culture, language and food is well known.But what I observed when I was in Delhi for some time is that:

In the heart of a cosmopolitan city like Delhi where people from not only every nook and corner of India but also from various parts of the world coexist,1. A traffic signal is always called a "LAl batti (erra deepam)"2. Crossroads are always called "gol chakkar".3. A spoon is always called a "CHEMMACH"4. Believe it or not, In post offices, I have heard with my own ears more than once an inland letter being called an"Antardeshiy Patr".

The question is about the importance being given to English and also about neglecting Telugu. Well, why should we learn English? The answer is very clear: to get better jobs. But how should we learn English?This is the biggest question... and the answer can not be by "Eating English, Drinking English, Speaking English, ..." ALL THE TIME sacrificing our own mother tongue. It is a myth that English can be learnt only by studying in English medium schools and that too by moving away from Telugu language and Telugu culture. Even in a city like Hyderabad we can see hundreds or even thousands of people who have mastery over 4 or more languages.We have better known examples of PVNarasimha Rao and Puttaparthi Narayanacharyulu who learnt more than a dozen languages each. It is an established fact that Indians in general and south Indians in particular have the natural bility to comprehend different languages easily. That being the case I fail to understand why people these days are trying to keep their chidren away from Telugu language and culture in their own land only to learn English and that too when it is more clear than ever that the present day children are smarter than their elders.

Here, one word of caution: Imparting primary education in a language other than the child's mother tongue renders the whole education meaningless. The child has to relate what is being taught in the class room with what is being faced in the outside world. This is possible only when the language used in the class room is the same as the language used at home and in the suroundings and the language the child is most comfortable in ie, its mother tongue. Otherwise, the child will get the feeling that the moment it enters the school, it is entering an entirely different world far removed from reality.This does not augur well either to the child or to the education system.

There are several people around us who don't know what an uTTi is. Such things will survive only in Bhagavatam stories.

English is a truly international language. It has its own regional flavours in various parts of the world. Still there is a long felt need to "Indianise" it more to better suit our cultural requirements. The process is going on (eg, we have introduced "co-brother" to English in addition to an embarrassingly ambiguous brother-in-law and have successfully converted 'enjoy' into an intransitive verb) but it needs to speed up.

English has many thousands of words which do not have equivalents in any other language leave alone Telugu and new words are being added to it every day. But one sensitive point we must note here is that every word is Anglicised before being added to it. But Telugisation is not done when importing words from English. For example, "Bandicoot" is an English word taken from the Telugu word "Pandikokku". But not a single syllable in the English word has retained its original form. 'Pa' has become 'Ba'.'di' has become 'Di'. 'kokku' has become 'coot'. This is something like 'Suddhi'. Same is the fate of "kAsuneTTu" which has become 'cashewnut'. I am not suggesting to distort every English word we use as a revenge against English. But consider this: Telugu is called the Italian of the east because in both the languages words end with small vowels (hAyi golipe hraswa achchulu-pondikaina poTTi achchulu). I have read somewhere that only these two languages have this property. This renders songs composed in these languages suitable for any tune (RAga) by conveniently stretching the last vowel or cutting it short. That is why the "prathamA vibhakti" Du,mu,vu,lu were imposed on almost every word imported into Telugu from Sanskrit by ppropriately appending one of the four letters at the end of the word. eg, RAmah has become RAmuDu, kAvyah has become kAvyamu, gOh has become govu, etc.

Just like every person has a personality of their own, every language has its own personality. But with the onslaught of English many languages are losing their identity.

Actually institutions like Telugu Academy, Telugu Viswavidyalaym, AdhikAra Bhasha Sangham should take up the task of retaining the originality and uniqueness of our language. But can we really hope that they wil do it?

Recently in a movie song, phrases like heerAdhiheeruDu, sTArAdhisTAruDu were coined. Staradhistarudu sounds good but heeradhiheerudu is absurd and unacceptable.

Let me write briefly about the state of Telugu literature. Lately, there are new literary forms introduced into Telugu like Haikoos and nAnees. The streams of literature are steeming except drama. If one laments that in the past one hundred years there is no Telugu drama that stands anywhere near Kanyasulkam, we can't refute it. (If only Yandamuri continued writing dramas.......??) But all other literary forms have greatly developed in style, and the topics they deal with are greatly diversified. Especially short story is said to be passing through its "Golden Age" now. Regarding novels, every year, at least a couple of good or great novels are coming out. We have Sannapureddy Venkatarami Reddy's "KADi", Chandra Latha's "RaegaDi Vittulu" etc on one side and novels like "Thapana" on the other. I don't follow poetry keenly and so I can't say anything about it. Regarding the Publishing houses, PrajasakthiBook House has published a great number of books on children's literature. I suggest you regularly follow magazines like Rachana, Patrika, and more important: never ever think you are too old to read (Telugu) Chandamama.

In this discuusion when I said earlier "Actually institutions like Telugu Academy, Telugu Viswavidyalaym, AdhikAra Bhasha Sangham should take up the task .... But can we really hope that they wil do it?" I meant developing the language to meet the present day needs so that people using Telugu can have access to the latest developments in various disciplines.

Noam Chomsky was recently voted as the world’s greatest living intellectual defeating great scientists like Stephen Hawking. He is basically a linguist but has done yeoman service to the information revolution because it was his pathbreaking study of grammars of natural languages of the world that led to the development of grammars for computer languages. He classified grammars of languages into 4 types and this classification is known as Chomsky hierarchy.The following passages are reproduced from wikipedia. Remember Turing test? It is a test designed by A.Turing to identify whether the answers to the questions are given by a machine with Artificial Intelligence or a human being. It is a litmus test for machines with AI.- 3vkrmAvram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar, often considered the most significant contribution to the field of theoretical linguistics of the 20th century. He also helped spark the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, which challenged the behaviorist approach to the study of mind and language dominant in the 1950s. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has also affected the philosophy of language and mind (see Harman, Fodor). He is also credited with the establishment of the so-called Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power.Along with his linguistics work, Chomsky is also widely known for his political activism, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist, a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism, and is often considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of American politics.According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, between 1980 and 1992 Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any living scholar, and the eighth most cited source overall.Chomsky hierarchyThe Chomsky hierarchy is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars that generate formal languages. This hierarchy of these grammars which are also called phrase structure grammars was described by Noam Chomsky in 1956 .Formal grammarsA formal grammar consists of a finite set of terminal symbols (the letters of the words in the formal language), a finite set of nonterminal symbols, a finite set of production rules with a left- and a right-hand side consisting of a word of these symbols, and a start symbol. A rule may be applied to a word by replacing the left-hand side by the right-hand side. A derivation is a sequence of rule applications. Such a grammar defines the formal language of all words consisting solely of terminal symbols that can be reached by a derivation from the start symbol.Nonterminals are usually represented by uppercase letters, terminals by lowercase letters, and the start symbol by S. For example, the grammar with terminals {a,b}, nonterminals {S,A,B}, production rulesS → ABSS → ε (where ε is the empty string)BA → ABBS → bBb → bbAb → abAa → aaand start symbol S, defines the language of all words of the form anbn (i.e. n copies of a followed by n copies of b). The following is a simpler grammar that defines a similar language: Terminals {p,q}, Nonterminals {S}, Start symbol S, Production rulesS → pSqS → εSee formal grammar for a more elaborate explanation.The hierarchyThe Chomsky hierarchy consists of the following levels:· Type-0 grammars (unrestricted grammars) include all formal grammars. They generate exactly all languages that can be recognized by a Turing machine. These languages are also known as the recursively enumerable languages. Note that this is different from the recursive languages which can be decided by an always halting Turing machine.· Type-1 grammars (context-sensitive grammars) generate the context-sensitive languages. These grammars have rules of the form with A a nonterminal and α, β and γ strings of terminals and nonterminals. The strings α and β may be empty, but γ must be nonempty. The rule is allowed if S does not appear on the right side of any rule. The languages described by these grammars are exactly all languages that can be recognized by a non-deterministic Turing machine whose tape is bounded by a constant times the length of the input.· Type-2 grammars (context-free grammars) generate the context-free languages. These are defined by rules of the form with A a nonterminal and γ a string of terminals and nonterminals. These languages are exactly all languages that can be recognized by a non-deterministic pushdown automaton. Context free languages are the theoretical basis for the syntax of most programming languages.· Type-3 grammars (regular grammars) generate the regular languages. Such a grammar restricts its rules to a single nonterminal on the left-hand side and a right-hand side consisting of a single terminal, possibly followed (or preceded, but not both in the same grammar) by a single nonterminal. The rule is also here allowed if S does not appear on the right side of any rule. These languages are exactly all languages that can be decided by a finite state automaton. Additionally, this family of formal languages can be obtained by regular expressions. Regular languages are commonly used to define search patterns and the lexical structure of programming languages.Note that the set of grammars corresponding to recursive languages is not a member of this hierarchy.Every regular language is context-free, every context-free language is context-sensitive and every context-sensitive language is recursive and every recursive language is recursively enumerable. These are all proper inclusions, meaning that there exist recursively enumerable languages which are not recursive, recursive languages that are not context-sensitive, context-sensitive languages which are not context-free and context-free languages which are not regular.The following table summarizes each of Chomsky's four types of grammars, the class of languages it generates, the type of automaton that recognizes it, and the form its rules must have.

"HE IS THE COW. The cow is a successful animal. Also he is 4 footed, And because he is female, he give milks, [ but will do so when he is got child.] He is same like-God, sacred to Hindus and useful to man. But he has got four legs together. Two are forward and two are afterwards. His whole body can be utilised for use. More so the milk. Milk comes from 4 taps attached to his basement. [ horses dont have any such attachment]What can it do? Various ghee, butter, cream, curd, why and the condensed milk and so forth. Also he is useful to cobbler, watermans and mankind generally. His motion is slow only because he is of lazy species, Also his other motion.. gober] is much useful to trees, plants as well as for making flat cakes[like Pizza] , in hand and drying in the sun.Cow is the only animal that extricates his feeding after eating. Then afterwards she chew with his teeth whom are situated in the inside of the mouth. He is incessantly in the meadows in the grass. His only attacking and defending organ is the horns, specially so when he is got child. This is done by knowing his head whereby he causes the weapons to be paralleled to the ground of the earth and instantly proceed with great velocity forwards. He has got tails also, situated in the backyard, but not like similar animals. It has hairs on the other end of the other side. This is done to frighten away the flies which alight on his cohesive body hereupon he gives hit with it.The palms of his feet are soft unto the touch. So the grasses head is not crushed. At night time have poses by looking down on the ground and he shouts . His eyes and nose are like his other relatives. This is the cow....... "

We are informed that the candidate passed the exam, and is now an IAS!

There are some wonderful short stories in Telugu which deal with the sensitive issue of the kind of relationship that exists or that should exist between man and woman, lovers or spouses.Chalam wrote several stories and novels including the great shocker called "Mydanam".Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao wrote "ADavalasina Abaddham" in which he placed love over and above the marital relationship, which solely depends on the nuptial ceremony. The hero in it risks his marital life in his quest for true love but in the end, wins both birds at one shot.There are some other great stories I have read about true love and understanding between wife and husband. I don't remember the names but one was written by Chaya Mallik and another one by Sannapu Reddy Venkatarami Reddy (both published in Rachana several years ago) the details of which I can provide later.But the reason why I am writing this is the story I have read in 6-11-2005's Eenadu Adivaram magazine.You too read the story and post your comments: The Story